Funny Quotations About Retail Shoe, Hardware, Drug, Department Stores

This is a collection of fun and funny quotations about retail stores from well-known retail leaders like Ron Johnson and Tory Burch and famous comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and Steve Wright. For as long as there have been retail stores, people have had something funny to say about them; here are just a few of our favorites.

“Only in America - do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front of the store” - Anonymous

"I went to a general store but they wouldn't let me buy anything specific.” - Steven Wright, American Comedian

"We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.” - Bill Bryson, American Author

"A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking." - Jerry Seinfeld, American Comedian

"I never think that people die. They just go to department stores." - Andy Warhol, American Artist

“Teenagers travel in droves, packs, swarms. To the librarian, they're a gaggle of geese. To the cook, they're a scourge of locusts. To department stores, they're a big beautiful exaltation of larks. all lovely and loose and jingly.” - Bernice Fitz-Gibbon, Retail Advertising Executive

"In department stores, so much kitchen equipment is bought indiscriminately by people who just come in for men's underwear." - Julia Child, Celebrity Chef and Cookbook Author

"I used to love going into local hardware stores, to look at little things they made locally. Nowadays it's harder, though you can still do it in Vietnam.” - Francis Ford Coppola, Film Director, Producer, & Screenwriter

“I still believe in the Holy Trinity, except now it's Target, Trader Joe's, and IKEA.” ― Jen Lancaster, American Author

"I love going to the grocery store and the market. None of its drudgery for me. Washing dishes is the drudgery.” - Ted Allen, TV Personality

"If I won the lottery I'd start a charity that helped little family hardware stores, cobblers, and fruit shops open in city centres.” - Alexei Sayle, British Comedian and Actor

"No customer ever goes to a store merely to please the storekeeper." - Kazuo Inamori, Japanese Entrepreneur and Philanthropist

"I could have closed down bits of British Home Stores to make more money but it's not my style. I want to make my money as a retailer, not by putting people out of work.” - Philip Green, CEO of Topshop

"My company is an extension of me, so when I designed my stores I wanted people to feel that they were in my home.” - Tory Burch, American Fashion Designer

"Anyone can look for fashion in a boutique or history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store and fashion in an airport." -Robert Wieder

"The scene was a swirl of candy-bright lights--the Victoria's Secret fuchsia signboard, signboards which lured one to purchase "confidence," or "sexual appeal," or whatever it was that was being advertised--the fluorescent lights in each store, contrasting with the shiny, black-tiled walls and eye-catching speckled marble tiles on the ground. One could lick the floor--the tiles were spotless, clean like the fake air she was breathing in, like the atoms and cells in her that were decaying in stale neglect.” ― Jess C. Scott, Author

"In the factory we make cosmetics; in the store we sell hope." - Charles Revson

"The reason Apple is really good, I think, and the reason their stores succeeded, is not just 'cause we know the big idea, but we have a real passion for the littlest detail. It's legendary in our products." - Ron Johnson, Former CEO of JCPenney and Former SVP of Apple Retail

"The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire history of television." - Andrew Ross, Writer, and Professor at New York University

"I don't fret much about the natural lifespans of shoe companies. If stores don't do the right things, they cease to exist, and that doesn't trouble me at all.” - Steve Madden, Founder of Steve Madden Shoes

"A woman will buy anything she thinks the store is losing money on." - Kin Hubbard, American Cartoonist and Humorist

"And so if your competitors aren't growing, if there isn't a competitive reason to grow, and you want to focus and discipline to add customers to existing stores, you adjust your strategy.” - Jim Cantalupo, Former CEO of McDonald’s

"I was in the drug store the other day trying to get a cold medication... Not easy. There's an entire wall of products you need. You stand there going, 'Well, this one is quick acting but this is long lasting... Which is more important, the present or the future?'" - Jerry Seinfeld